Birthright: Chimaeron

AF - Areida Faderan wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 07, 2019 7:47 pm

Sounds like you're suggesting an arms race.

Isn't that what happens with spells (ie I have magic missile...so what, I now have lightning bolt...oh yeah, I have cloudkill..well I've got a sphere of annihilation!!).

AF - Areida Faderan wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 07, 2019 7:47 pm

Sounds like you're suggesting an arms race.

Only of you believe that ever more powerful spells are not already an arms race...

I'm suggesting that having an effective counter to a known Realm Spell would make sense as another realm spell.

After all, taking normal spells into consideration, there are elemental based attack spells...and resist energy and protection from energy spells. Why would Realm Spells be different in concept as well as in size?

New spells don't have to be 'ever more powerful'. The problem with suggestions that are targeted to counter other players' tactics rather than to permit new tactics is that they have a destructive effect on the metagame. Another problem is that players are too biased to design or balance them, the DM has to be deeply involved.

Then what on earth are we even bothering to talk in this context for, since by your own admission you're too biased to be able to comment the same as everyone else...

I grant that new spells don't have to be more powerful. I never said they did. What I did say is that there is already an arms race in concern with spells and gaining them.

Further, no one is at all destroying a tactic for players. We are devising a counter. Which, by the way, as you've pointed out, there is already counters. Further, it still takes the same players doing research, having sources, with the same consistent restrictions on both of the previous requirements, to be able to cast the new spell suggestion.

No, I don't buy in to what you're saying at all. The idea of a protection from summons is a good idea. I try not to toot my own horn, but everything you've said here only reaffirms that it is a good suggestion.

I mean heck, there are already counters for the other traditional realm issues. Creating the fogs to stop units coming and going. Dispel to stop subversions. The only thing that does not seem to have an effective counter is summoning.

Having a counter doesn't mean an end to a tactic. It means having an effective way of dealing with that tactic, which in turn adds a strategic dynamic, not removes one.

Right. So if Juan agrees, whoever invests in researching this specific counter to undead and summons can then use it against the players who use undead and summons, who, understandably upset, will invent a new spell to use against those who introduced the counterspell, and meanwhile the other players will busily emote '>_>' and '<_<' while speculating on how this is going to affect them.

The best I can say about this is that it'd give us something else to do aside from play the game that exists.

And why not develop more spells? Or *egasp* maybe enlist the aid of others to get a work around the road block?

And why would ayers be upset that there is good RolePlaying opportunities? Or, to put it in perspective, why would they be more upset than someone casting a Warding Spell, or Subversion, etc?

I've honestly tried to see things from your perspective here, but there doesn't seem to be any game logic or reason to deny the existence of the realm spell speculated. If I'm missing something, please explain. But, I'm sorry to say "this makes someone else's strategy more difficult" doesn't cut it, because all the other strategies have counters. Having one thing that no one can stop is OP.

You're getting really dishonest here. To answer your questions: Because it's an arms race. Because it's an arms race. Because it's an arms race. Because it's an arms race.

An arms race is a distraction that devolves things into incoherence. The end of an arms race is the game being over. There's no game play in the mean time, only the distraction of an arms race. The best we could hope for is that it moves slowly enough that those not involved can have fun around it.

Summoning is not something 'that no one can stop'. It's not even that good. It's something someone can pull out of their pocket as a surprise, but anyone who uses it as a core strategy is inherently vulnerable.

I think the most fruitful approach would be scaling up regular spells into realm spells. The only time I ever created a realm spell in-game, it was just a scaled-up regular spell (and, as it happened, was cooperative, needing a priest and a mage to cast it together -- it combined control temperature and control weather, trying to make a permanent winter in various provinces.)

One suggestion, for example, since there are no illusion/phantasm realm spells for mages, might be a realm spell version of Fear -- it could be modeled after defection, more powerful in that it can hit more units but less powerful in that it causes them to break/do a morale check rather than switch sides. Another illusion realm spell might be a scaled up version of spectral forces, which duplicates an army, and allows a friendly regent to assign then phantom forces along with real ones. The false forces wouldn't be revealed until battle begins, which would force rival regents to try to guess which forces are real, and whether any of the units they see moving are real at all (or if all of them are).

I also think that the lists that exist could be considered, and some spells perhaps condensed, redesigned, or reassigned to other schools. Abjuration and Alteration have, I think, the most realm spells. Feign Destruction (an Alteration spell) could probably become an Illusion spell. Shadow Block (another Alteration spell) could probably become Abjuration. All those various source/ley line protection Abjuration spells could probably be condensed into one or two spells, which might make them more attractive to a PC (but probably not.)